The furious and overlooked NSW voters who could topple Gladys Berejiklian’s government

The NSW election seems to be all about billion-dollar stadiums. There’s a whole chunk of people who’ve been overlooked, and they’re baying for blood.

ANALYSIS

It’s stinking hot but you’re only allowed to run the evaporative cooler on your roof for a few hours in the late afternoon.

You’re forced to bathe your kids in 10 centimetres of brown-tinged bath water once a day and restricted to a brisk three-minute shower yourself.

If you need to see a doctor for much more than a flu, you’ll have to drive hours east to see someone — if you can get in.

There’s little future for your kids, who will head to the city to make do with their below par education gained in the bush.

And that’s not to mention what the crippling drought in New South Wales has done to working life for farmers and primary producers.

Yet, for those who face this stark and uncertain daily reality in the state’s far west, they switch on the nightly news or flick open a newspaper and see little about them this election.

The cracked bed of a water canal between Pooncarie and Menindee — one stark illustration of the consequences of the crippling drought. Picture: AAP

It’s all billion-dollar stadiums and an overdue, over-budget light rail project in Sydney. While it made news for a week, the mass fish kill in the Darling River and the apparent sheer mismanagement of the Murray Darling Basin aren’t talked about either.

People out west tend to vote for the National Party without question, as though they’re on autopilot at the ballot box.

It’s what their parents did, and their parents.

But this time around, something seems to have shifted and the political party that’s always been for the bush is on the nose.

People in the west of New South Wales feel like there’s been little for them in the election.

The Nationals’ polling in the west is bad news for Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: Nathan Edwards.

The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (SFF) Party is benefiting from the backlash, running candidates in a slew of critical seats against the Coalition Government.

And the polling is worrying for Premier Gladys Berejiklian and her Coalition colleagues.

Barwon is a huge electorate that makes up 44 per cent of NSW’s land mass and has been held by the Nationals for almost 70 years.

They’re now on track to lose it to the SFF Party and its candidate Roy Butler, according to polling, while their primary vote has slumped from 29 per cent in 2015 to 35 per cent.

Murray in the state’s southwest corner, taking in the regional town of Griffith, is also on track to cause an upset. Helen Dalton is running for the SFF and could be one of the figures to hold the balance of power in a minority government — an increasingly likely outcome.

Ms Dalton has vowed to “block spending in Sydney” until there’s a guaranteed funding boost for rural schools and hospitals.

Roy Butler, the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party candidate for Barwon, is likely to nab the huge electorate from the National Party.

Orange, in the state’s central west, was nabbed by the SFF at a by-election in 2016 after a mammoth 30 per cent swing against the Nationals. Philip Donato is quietly confident of retaining it.

In the seat of Upper Hunter, there’s a similar air of discontent and Nationals MP Michael Johnsen holds it on a thin margin of 2.2 per cent. The SFF has been spending a lot of time there, hopeful that former Hunter Shire Mayor Lee Watts can nab it.

At a press conference last week, Ms Berejiklian described the SFF as “dangerous”, her remarks coinciding with the emergence of images on social media of several candidates holding guns.

On Sunday, former Prime Minister John Howard fronted a new advertising campaign warning that the SFF Party could water down his signature gun laws, introduced in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

Labor is swapping preferences with the minor party in some seats and the guns issue is one the Liberals have been keen to jump on. Although, they delayed the release of the ad by two days due to the horror terror attacks in Christchurch.

The far north western town of Walgett is running out of water and local farmer Sam Evans is one of a number of those who work on the land who’s struggling. Picture: Nathan Edwards

NSW Minister for Primary Industries, Regional Water, Trade and Industry, Niall Blair, has been criticised in the bush for blaming the fish kills purely on drought, denying it’s got anything to do with water management. Picture: AAP

The SFF Party like guns. They’ve advocated for relaxed gun control laws and made some troubling statements in recent years about semiautomatic firearms.

The Premier has long been outspoken about the value of gun regulations and an opponent of watering down laws.

But with some alarming political writing on the wall, you have to wonder if at least a little of the “danger” Ms Berejiklian refers to is to do with the National Party’s dire polling against the SFF Party.